UI Service Binding Tools

So back in the day when Swing was Sun's step child and there were applications like Forte 4 Java and before we new any better we all dealt with JDBC to get data from a database. So tools like Forte4Java would allow you to create a datasource and pick and choose tables and columns and all this handy dandy code was generated for CRUD operations on said table(s). This was all fine and good because UI's didn't have to be flashy. They just needed to be functional. And all that was required was a view into a database.

Now that we've wised up and started wrapping database operations inside of Service and DAO interfaces and now that our UI's are expected to be magically beautiful things have gotten better for the end user and coding to interfaces, well, that's just the cat's pajamas.

However, our ease of binding data to the UI has taken a turn for the worse. Sure, we have some binding frameworks in the works that allow us to bind UI components to Java objects. But that is only one piece of the puzzle. What I'd like to find is a tool/API/something that allows us to take that one step further and bind to a service/dao method. So where as before I chose what columns in a table I want displayed and bound to specific components I can now choose a service/dao, choose the method, and then choose which Java object properties I want bound. What methods to use for save, update, delete, etc.